Whew! Just finished the new(ish) Richard Ford, and though I have had, from time to time, my issues with the man's work (including The Sportswriter, which has always seemed half-baked to me), this book is exactly what I've been dying to read lately. I think it's gotten me off my only-crime-novels-and-recording-magazines kick.
The book gets off to a slow start--it seems only to consist of Frank Bascombe driving around thinking--but the rambling narrative gradually draws several disparate threads into focus: the nature of love, of mortality, of community. Ford has done his homework on the subject of New Jersey (Bascombe has left the Haddam of the last book and has moved to The Shore), to the extent that he actually overindulges the use of characteristic personality types, cultural signifiers, and place names. But one's sense is that the preoccupation is Bascombe's, not Ford's, such is our immersion in Bascombe's voice.
This same phenomenon obtains in one of the book's oddest qualities--it manages to make the spectacularly implausible not only forgiveable, but somehow more convincing than real life. The plot shakes off its langour after 200 pages or so and gradually comes to seem like a wild, eventful dream; and Bascombe's narrative simultaneously less trustworthy and more authentic. It's mesmerizing, really--by the end, you're perfectly willing to accept the bizarre agglomeration of motifs (including a car crash, Russian teen gangsters, and a time capsule) that back on page 50 you would have sneered at.
I don't think I've ever known of a writer whose various approaches to fiction result in such wildly uneven results--there are stories of Ford's I really cannot stand, particularly the ones in Women With Men, a book I thought marked the expiration of his prodigious talents. But, go figure, I adore this novel. There's something about Bascombe that turns Ford into some kind of genius--the character leads the writer to his deepest, funniest, and most human places.
Showing posts with label Richard Ford. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Richard Ford. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Monday, May 21, 2007
This Week In Stinginess
A few bloggers got themselves worked into a fairly justifiable tizzy not long ago, when this article about book reviewing ran in the New York Times. The article is about the peril that literary culture finds itself in, but there's quite a humdinger of a quote right at the end, that has been much reprinted over the past couple of weeks:
It is unfortunate to see a writer as good as Richard Ford betray his insecurity in the face of the teeming literate masses. Of course he likes the literary establishment; the literary establishment likes him. But does he really think that decent criticism still needs to be vetted by the big boys to mean anything? Has Richard Ford actually read the newspaper book reviews lately? They are crap--and nobody is to blame but the establishment itself. The Times Book Review has long indulged in the bizarre tactic of only assigning intelligent reviewers to challenging books, then assigning swooning newbies to quasi-populist hackery; the result is that shitty books get great reviews and interesting books get nitpicked.
The fact is, the literary establishment has discovered it likes making money. Ford is one of the few writers who makes it money because he can actually write. But I can promise that, if his novels quit selling, his institutionally-backed admirers would quit admiring him right quick, and those of us who write online about literature for fun will keep on feeling the same way about him we used to, and who would he be grateful to then?
Anyway, the Ford flap isn't so terribly irksome, not in the face of the latest odious screed from Mark Helprin, which appeared in the Times over the weekend. It seems he would like copyrights to extend forever, thus allowing Disney to get rich off its stale creations for eternity. Here, though, is the money quote:
Can you see the mistake? No, no, not the parenthetical "again?", which is almost too pathetic to mention. The mistake is that the rights to his imaginary masterpiece would not be "stripped" from his heirs--in fact, his heirs would keep all their rights. They would just have to share them with everybody else.
Copyright law is odd in that it codifies the egalitarian idea that ideas themselves cannot be owned, at least not forever. An idea changes the moment it enters somebody's head. You may publish the book you wrote, but the book your readers read is never the same one; their interpretation of your prose is unique to them, the characters altered, the themes personalized. And when they go to write their own books, your book will inform their style, their approach, their execution. Students all over America are right now sketching copies of your painting out of Artforum. Amateur actors are mangling your play. The ambulating whistler is adding trills and arpeggios to your hit single.
Writers ought to be rewarded for their work, even Mark Helperin. But after a while, they have to let go, to let the world have what they wrote. Helprin's heirs could publish their own "definitive" editions of his books after he's gone, if they wanted; and more readers than not, if Helprin actually has readers after his death, would choose them over the other editions published under the public domain. The Helprin Touch can still feel special, even once his personal claim to the material has weakened. It's just that his heirs would have to actually come up with a worthwhile edition to make money. In other words they would have to, you know, earn it.
The alternative is a world in which ideas will forever belong to people like the people who now own Happy Birthday To You, a song the Hill Sisters simply ripped off in 1893, by changing a single note of an already popular tune. For this little appropriation, Warner Chappell owns your aging ass until 2030. Sorry, grandad!
As for Helprin, I suspect his bloated tales of triumphalist self-actualization will be about as popular after he's gone as the neocon horseshit he's been ghostwriting for the past decade or two. But what do I know, I'm just a guy writing on the internet.
Of course literary bloggers argue that they do provide a multiplicity of voices. But some authors distrust those voices. Mr. [Richard] Ford, who has never looked at a literary blog, said he wanted the judgment and filter that he believed a newspaper book editor could provide. “Newspapers, by having institutional backing, have a responsible relationship not only to their publisher but to their readership,” Mr. Ford said, “in a way that some guy sitting in his basement in Terre Haute maybe doesn’t.”
It is unfortunate to see a writer as good as Richard Ford betray his insecurity in the face of the teeming literate masses. Of course he likes the literary establishment; the literary establishment likes him. But does he really think that decent criticism still needs to be vetted by the big boys to mean anything? Has Richard Ford actually read the newspaper book reviews lately? They are crap--and nobody is to blame but the establishment itself. The Times Book Review has long indulged in the bizarre tactic of only assigning intelligent reviewers to challenging books, then assigning swooning newbies to quasi-populist hackery; the result is that shitty books get great reviews and interesting books get nitpicked.
The fact is, the literary establishment has discovered it likes making money. Ford is one of the few writers who makes it money because he can actually write. But I can promise that, if his novels quit selling, his institutionally-backed admirers would quit admiring him right quick, and those of us who write online about literature for fun will keep on feeling the same way about him we used to, and who would he be grateful to then?
Anyway, the Ford flap isn't so terribly irksome, not in the face of the latest odious screed from Mark Helprin, which appeared in the Times over the weekend. It seems he would like copyrights to extend forever, thus allowing Disney to get rich off its stale creations for eternity. Here, though, is the money quote:
Were I tomorrow to write the great American novel (again?), 70 years after my death the rights to it, though taxed at inheritance, would be stripped from my children and grandchildren.
Can you see the mistake? No, no, not the parenthetical "again?", which is almost too pathetic to mention. The mistake is that the rights to his imaginary masterpiece would not be "stripped" from his heirs--in fact, his heirs would keep all their rights. They would just have to share them with everybody else.
Copyright law is odd in that it codifies the egalitarian idea that ideas themselves cannot be owned, at least not forever. An idea changes the moment it enters somebody's head. You may publish the book you wrote, but the book your readers read is never the same one; their interpretation of your prose is unique to them, the characters altered, the themes personalized. And when they go to write their own books, your book will inform their style, their approach, their execution. Students all over America are right now sketching copies of your painting out of Artforum. Amateur actors are mangling your play. The ambulating whistler is adding trills and arpeggios to your hit single.
Writers ought to be rewarded for their work, even Mark Helperin. But after a while, they have to let go, to let the world have what they wrote. Helprin's heirs could publish their own "definitive" editions of his books after he's gone, if they wanted; and more readers than not, if Helprin actually has readers after his death, would choose them over the other editions published under the public domain. The Helprin Touch can still feel special, even once his personal claim to the material has weakened. It's just that his heirs would have to actually come up with a worthwhile edition to make money. In other words they would have to, you know, earn it.
The alternative is a world in which ideas will forever belong to people like the people who now own Happy Birthday To You, a song the Hill Sisters simply ripped off in 1893, by changing a single note of an already popular tune. For this little appropriation, Warner Chappell owns your aging ass until 2030. Sorry, grandad!
As for Helprin, I suspect his bloated tales of triumphalist self-actualization will be about as popular after he's gone as the neocon horseshit he's been ghostwriting for the past decade or two. But what do I know, I'm just a guy writing on the internet.
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Fiction and Coincidence
A couple of years ago I was having coffee with my friend E. and talking about our respective family histories. I had known her since we had moved into the neighborhood a few years before and knew she was from California, but I didn't know her family ranched in southern California back in pioneer times. So did mine, I told her. Her family was on land that became Camp Pendleton, she said. So was mine!
When I later researched it on the internet, I discovered that when my great-great-grandfather arrived in California in 1884 and began ranching on his homestead, he was sued by my friend's great-grandfather over ownership of the land. My guy won. Later, things turned bad (grasshoppers, horse thieves) and he went into sharecropping for E.'s guy, then got into hotel-keeping. After he died, his wife sold the hotel to a man who abruptly died, too, and then the hotel became a hangout for hoboes. (That's the part I had always known about.) In the 1880 census, E.'s g-grandfather's occupation is "Capitalist."
This would be bizarre coincidence enough -- I only know E. because of the proximity of our houses, 3000 miles from the disputed ranch; it's not as if we found each other in a California pioneers club, or because of a love of horses or hotels -- but about a year ago my friend became a realtor and just the other day she helped us make an offer on a house. If I believed in that sort of thing, I'd say we were working out some kind of karma. And who knows, maybe I do believe it. Mostly I believe that world is big and complex enough so that coincidences are a natural by-product. Mostly.
Anyway, at first I thought that this would make a good story, but then I realized why it wouldn't. Coincidence is fascinating in real life because it hints at a design created for mysterious purposes by an unseen designer. In a book, the designer is not so mysterious -- it's the writer -- and the purpose is usually obvious, too: it's to finish the dang plot.
When coincidence does work in fiction, it's when the characters acknowledge the coincidence and try to figure what's really going on -- then it becomes psychologically interesting and exciting. That's what Paul Auster does in his best work. Other times Auster's characters numbly accept the coincidence and we're supposed to be fascinated. I think not.
I just started reading Richard Ford's new novel about the pre-9/11 period, The Lay of the Land. I liked The Sportswriter and loved Independence Day, and this book continues with the same character, Frank Bascombe, who is a.... real estate agent!
When I later researched it on the internet, I discovered that when my great-great-grandfather arrived in California in 1884 and began ranching on his homestead, he was sued by my friend's great-grandfather over ownership of the land. My guy won. Later, things turned bad (grasshoppers, horse thieves) and he went into sharecropping for E.'s guy, then got into hotel-keeping. After he died, his wife sold the hotel to a man who abruptly died, too, and then the hotel became a hangout for hoboes. (That's the part I had always known about.) In the 1880 census, E.'s g-grandfather's occupation is "Capitalist."
This would be bizarre coincidence enough -- I only know E. because of the proximity of our houses, 3000 miles from the disputed ranch; it's not as if we found each other in a California pioneers club, or because of a love of horses or hotels -- but about a year ago my friend became a realtor and just the other day she helped us make an offer on a house. If I believed in that sort of thing, I'd say we were working out some kind of karma. And who knows, maybe I do believe it. Mostly I believe that world is big and complex enough so that coincidences are a natural by-product. Mostly.
Anyway, at first I thought that this would make a good story, but then I realized why it wouldn't. Coincidence is fascinating in real life because it hints at a design created for mysterious purposes by an unseen designer. In a book, the designer is not so mysterious -- it's the writer -- and the purpose is usually obvious, too: it's to finish the dang plot.
When coincidence does work in fiction, it's when the characters acknowledge the coincidence and try to figure what's really going on -- then it becomes psychologically interesting and exciting. That's what Paul Auster does in his best work. Other times Auster's characters numbly accept the coincidence and we're supposed to be fascinated. I think not.
I just started reading Richard Ford's new novel about the pre-9/11 period, The Lay of the Land. I liked The Sportswriter and loved Independence Day, and this book continues with the same character, Frank Bascombe, who is a.... real estate agent!
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